pt waiting for the chemists, she certainly did have her
fears. Chemical agriculture is expensive; and though the results may
possibly be remunerative, still, while we are thus kept waiting by
the backwardness of the chemists, there must be much risk in making
any serious expenditure with such views.

"Mother," he said, when he had now been at home about three months,
and when the fiat for the expulsion of Samuel Dockwrath had already
gone forth, "I shall go to Liverpool to-morrow."

"To Liverpool, Lucius?"

"Yes. That guano which I got from Walker is adulterated. I have
analyzed it, and find that it does not contain above thirty-two and a
half hundredths of--of that which it ought to hold in a proportion of
seventy-five per cent. of the whole."

"Does it not?"

"No; and it is impossible to obtain results while one is working with
such fictitious materials. Look at that bit of grass at the bottom of
Greenwood's Hill."

"The fifteen-acre field? Why, Lucius, we always had the heaviest
crops of hay in the parish off that meadow."

"That's all very well, mother; but you have never tried,--nobody
about here ever has tried, what the land can really produce. I will
throw that and the three fields beyond it into one; I will get
Greenwood to let me have that bit of the hill-side, giving him
compensation of course--"

"And then Dockwrath would want compensation."

"Dockwrath is an impertinent rascal, and I shall take an opportunity
of telling him so. But as I was saying, I will throw those seventy
acres together, and then I will try what will be the relative effects
of guano and the patent blood, But I must have real guano, and so I
shall go to Liverpool."

"I think I would wait a little, Lucius. It is almost too late for any
change of that kind this year."

"Wait! Yes, and what has come of waiting? We don't wait at all in
doubling our population every thirty-three years; but when we come
to the feeding of them we are always for waiting. It is that waiting
which has reduced the intellectual development of one half of the
human race to its present terribly low state--or rather prevented its
rising in a degree proportionate to the increase of the population.
No more waiting for me, mother, if I can help it."

"But, Lucius, should not such new attempts as that be made by men
with large capital?" said the mother.

"Capital is a bugbear," said the son, speaking on this matter quite
_ex cathedra_, as no doubt he was en